Some People Don't Want the Same Things You Do
Many liberals seem inclined to believe that if most people were better educated, or if they were better informed, or if we had more informative media, then they would all stop voting Republican. Rich people would be the only Republican constituency. I even hear liberals talking this way about people like Dick Cheney -- doesn't he understand this or that?
I think this way of looking at Republican voters is very misleading. Most people are not completely cut off from schools, and libraries, and NPR, and the Internet, and bookstores,and opposing viewpoints. Especially not these days. Besides, there are plenty of people supporting Republicans who definitely have access to all of these things. This is not a matter of education and access to information. It is a matter of priorities.
Take the Iraq war as an example. We all know that a lot of people believed that Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attacks, even though that is completely untrue. Millions of people still believe this lie. Obviously that belief made one more likely to support the war at the start. If those people had been better informed, if the local news was reporting each night, IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, would there have been more opposition to the war? I think not. I think this is looking at the problem backwards. People didn't support the war because they had this mistaken belief -- they had this mistaken belief because they wanted the war, and felt like they needed some reason to want it that didn't sound totally nuts. People supported the war because they wanted the war. You can lock them inside a teach-in at Columbia for six hours, and they're still going to want the war, because it satisfied some psychological need for them.
With the economy right now, many liberals seem to think that once people who voted for Republican Senators see what happens without enough aid to states, then those Senators won't be Senators for much longer. But this assumes that those Republican voters voted the way they did because they wanted help for their state economies, or lower unemployment, and so on. Do you really think that after the evidence of the last twenty years, someone voted Republican because they wanted sane economic policy?
I think it's obvious that they didn't care about that either way, or they would have supported the Democrat. What you think are in the best interests of Republican voters in Utah or Kentucky aren't necessarily what those people think are in their best interests. Possibly those voters feel that it's in their best interests to achieve the catharsis of watching a foreign city destroyed, or to maintain the feeling of well-being they get from pretending that they are superior to African-Americans. Maybe they feel that it's in their best interests that women be forced to give birth, or for Christian fundamentalists to run the public schools. Maybe they don't vote for sane economic policy because they aren't voting on that basis.
I think that for many liberals this is a difficult problem. It's one thing to think of Republican voters as ignorant suckers who we have to rescue from themselves. It's not as pleasant to think of them as opponents who must be defeated in order to set the country on the right track. But I think the latter is the actual situation. Republican voters know what they are doing, and they know what they want. They want something crazy, but they can still vote, and you can't persuade them because your goals and motivations are totally different from their goals and motivations. I think we'd be way more effective as a party if we all understood that. Republican voters don't' care if we have a depression, or at any rate it is not a primary issue for them. They have their own issues, and we are never going to find common ground with them.
Ultimately, it really is about moral values. The complicated part is that not everyone has the same moral values, and sometimes it's impossible for everyone to see their moral values expressed through the government at the same time.
I think this way of looking at Republican voters is very misleading. Most people are not completely cut off from schools, and libraries, and NPR, and the Internet, and bookstores,and opposing viewpoints. Especially not these days. Besides, there are plenty of people supporting Republicans who definitely have access to all of these things. This is not a matter of education and access to information. It is a matter of priorities.
Take the Iraq war as an example. We all know that a lot of people believed that Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attacks, even though that is completely untrue. Millions of people still believe this lie. Obviously that belief made one more likely to support the war at the start. If those people had been better informed, if the local news was reporting each night, IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, would there have been more opposition to the war? I think not. I think this is looking at the problem backwards. People didn't support the war because they had this mistaken belief -- they had this mistaken belief because they wanted the war, and felt like they needed some reason to want it that didn't sound totally nuts. People supported the war because they wanted the war. You can lock them inside a teach-in at Columbia for six hours, and they're still going to want the war, because it satisfied some psychological need for them.
With the economy right now, many liberals seem to think that once people who voted for Republican Senators see what happens without enough aid to states, then those Senators won't be Senators for much longer. But this assumes that those Republican voters voted the way they did because they wanted help for their state economies, or lower unemployment, and so on. Do you really think that after the evidence of the last twenty years, someone voted Republican because they wanted sane economic policy?
I think it's obvious that they didn't care about that either way, or they would have supported the Democrat. What you think are in the best interests of Republican voters in Utah or Kentucky aren't necessarily what those people think are in their best interests. Possibly those voters feel that it's in their best interests to achieve the catharsis of watching a foreign city destroyed, or to maintain the feeling of well-being they get from pretending that they are superior to African-Americans. Maybe they feel that it's in their best interests that women be forced to give birth, or for Christian fundamentalists to run the public schools. Maybe they don't vote for sane economic policy because they aren't voting on that basis.
I think that for many liberals this is a difficult problem. It's one thing to think of Republican voters as ignorant suckers who we have to rescue from themselves. It's not as pleasant to think of them as opponents who must be defeated in order to set the country on the right track. But I think the latter is the actual situation. Republican voters know what they are doing, and they know what they want. They want something crazy, but they can still vote, and you can't persuade them because your goals and motivations are totally different from their goals and motivations. I think we'd be way more effective as a party if we all understood that. Republican voters don't' care if we have a depression, or at any rate it is not a primary issue for them. They have their own issues, and we are never going to find common ground with them.
Ultimately, it really is about moral values. The complicated part is that not everyone has the same moral values, and sometimes it's impossible for everyone to see their moral values expressed through the government at the same time.
Advertisement
I understand your basis and for the most part even subscribe to it.
However, I do believe that (as Democrats, Independents) not all Repubs are created 'equal' in their values, beliefs and/or ethics.
Personal experiences (impact) most times creates an individuals reactions, belief systems and stances to if not cause a total flip, at least cause some repositioning.
Unfortunately, party affiliation too oft results in misplaced loyalties and distorted rationale (not just Repubs). We're all, or should be, Americans first and any political group allegiances an optional far second.
Rec'd.Thanks.
February 9, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. I think that "we're all Americans first" is a perfectly good principle, even though I don't subscribe to it. However, I think that mass decisionmaking in a pluralistic society, especially one where the government and electoral structure encourages the primacy of just two political parties, requires that we fight for total victory in terms of what becomes law. I have nothing politically in common with what remains of the Republican party; therefore I believe that the system requires not compromise with the Republicans, but an effort to beat them utterly.
February 9, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ignorance
Prejudice
Values
Timing
All "function" to drive voting and other decisions.
"People supported the war because they wanted the war. "
That's true of some people, but it's also true that there were undecideds who didn't want a war but let one happen because of the Bush spin. And others who wanted a war only because of the spin.
There's no question that a good education broadens horizons and can affect values and decisions. Until you see the world at large, provincialism and even selfishness are the norm. Once you've seen the world, you can choose independently what values you to fight or fight for, and what your value priorities will be (eg, liberty vs. security, to put it starkly).
February 9, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are correct in your overall theory. It is a matter of prioriries and priorities informed by deep psychological needs. There has been a rather copious amount of psychological research done on this. The people who end up being conservatives/republicans are the ones who, as children, were most frightened by others and who did not get along well with others (I'm really not joking here). There are other identified traits, but this gives you the idea. It is not hard to identify these pathetic psychos once you become aware of the telltale signs.
It is so ironic it's amazing that all the breast-beating and super macho crap coming out of the Republicans is less designed to scare people as it is to deny the fear they themselves feel. I don't know who else thought this, but on the terrible night following 9/11 when that moron spoke to the nation all I saw was a terrified coward trying to make it look like he wasn't afraid. All of his bravado (and all the dark talk by Cheney, etc...) was simply their own fearfulness. They fed into the similir psychological weakness of a certain segment of the population and fooled others into thinking their fear based acting out was courage and resolve. Incredible really.
February 10, 2009 2:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe "pathetic psychos" is overkill here (though people in that group would be more apt to gravitate toward the Rs side of the yard)
I'm thinking of an old friend. She was raised by an overbearing and abusive father, had two failed marriages with charismatic, macho bad boys and has joined evangelical churches because "it makes her feel good." She is intelligent, kind and an absolute Republican. I think she just wants a strong, tough daddy who will kick anybody's ass who might be a threat. Insecure? Sure. But not by any streatch a psycho.
I think she is representative of the Republican base. They think the world is populated by raving lunatics and want to have their own raving lunatics to sich on them. So maybe paranoid would be the most acurate discription.
February 10, 2009 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't get too hung up on one word.
February 10, 2009 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Methinks most of what you have said about her does support that she has psycho issues. While appearing perfectly normal, the return to abusive men time and again suggests she is unable to make good choices, or to learn. No rational person wishes to be beaten up, but abused women return to their abusers because of a psychological dysfunction. It takes a lot of hard work for them to learn other ways and it is not for lack of intellect.
February 10, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great post and your main point is well taken, but with a quibble.
I do think that Republican voters don't want a depression, or at least most of them don't. The problem is that they are true believers in the Republican ideology pushed by the Republican legislators, who also care if there is a depression, but only because a depression will enhance their elect-ability in 2010 if the stimulus fails to work by then. Robert Reich has a discussion going on this phenomena in the Cafe now.
Prior to the economic crisis, sane economic policy to a republican voter was one that didn't mind when 9 billion taxpayer dollars went missing from a warehouse in Iraq, but screamed loudly if a welfare mother received one penny more than allowed.
War is a right, welfare is not. Makes sense only to a Republican.
February 10, 2009 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Might it take more than a month for the programming to start wearing off? Isn't Obama's election proof positive that the trends are moving in the direction of common sense over ideology?
I don't know a single real-world republican at the grassroots who resembles this blog. I suppose they exist because somehow has to listen to Limbaugh and Beck and the rest, but I hardly think they are a majority. If they were, Barack wouldn't be enjoying the approval ratings he has right now.
Leading by example can be tough, but it's really the only card the democratic party has right now if they want to actually fix the country. I think Barack gets that, notwithstanding the reminder he needed to give on television last night about just who is responsible for the mistakes he's been hired to tackle.
The transformation of this country will be a lot more complex and nuanced than war versus welfare.
February 10, 2009 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is about moral values. But before you can risk making a moral judgement, you have to have a global grasp of the situation.
I know of no one who believes Iraq was involved in 9-11. That is the twin straw man stood up by political detractors along with the WMD straw man.
Terrorism is really not a state tactic. A conventional response such as bombing a harbor is futile in countering these shadowy cadres.
The stated purpose of the incursion into Iraq was establishing a western style sort of democracy in that part of the world which spawns Islamic terrorism.
Iraq filled the bill because of geographic and ethnic qualifications, combined with the fact they're one of the most modern and educated of the Arab states, and given Hussein's intransigence which provided the excuse.
The idea of it is that if the Iraqis have that kind of gov, somehow it will spread and vanquish whatever breeds terrorism as it advances.
All that theory is over my head and I don't understand how it's going to work, but that's what the idea is. Actually it sounds a little weak to me. Kinda demeaning to Arabs the way I see it, that they could be manipulated that easily.
But our involvement in Iraq was not a knee jerk reaction to 9-11 and it's silly pretending it was.
February 10, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wrong again on all counts as usual.
The very clear primary reason for illegally invading Iraq was WMD's. That was a lie and they knew it.
You obviously don't read well published polls that have, for years, shown large segments of the American public believe Iraq was involved in 9/11. The believed it then and now because Bush and his companions lied about it for ages in order to maintain public support for the war.
Terrorism is most certainly a state tactic and has repeteadly been practiced by governments throughout history. Our government has terrorized the population of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians (men, women, and children)since the invasion. If that isn't terrorism I don't know what is.
The sophomoric idea that the US could destroy the government of Iraq and replace it "presto chango" with democracy was stupid from the begining. That foolish idea could only appeal to someone with absolutely no sense of history or any understanding of the dynamics of that nation, or, in other words George W. Bush. It was an idea doomed to failure and anyone with half a lick of sense knew that before the invasion. Many warned very publicly that exactly what has happened would happen prior to the war of aggression against Iraq was launched.
The illegal and wholly unjustified invasion of Iraq was and remains a crime against humanity that was most certainly a knee jerk reaction to 9/11. There are enormous amounts of documentation of this from a plethora of sources. You need to bone up on the basics. Have you been asleep the past 8 years or just not paying much attention?
February 10, 2009 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
That crap about WMD came along after the fact. There was little talk about such weapons in Iraq other than Saddam's supposed quest to acquire them prior to the invasion.
The term 'WMD' was coined by the DNC in collusion with network news management as a counterweight to the successful outcome of the incursion. At any rate, they had poison gas stockpiles and a reputation for using them.
If you're characterizing our liberating the people of Iraq from rape rooms, being slung off high rise buildings, being thrown into wood chippers, and being gassed by the thousands 'terrorism', then obviously you're some kind of foreign propagandist agent.
The jury is still out on the political theory behind the enterprise. I don't recall anyone using the term 'presto change', that's a bit childish on your part. But conditions in Iraq seem to show it might be sucessful to some degree in the end.
You've got to be nuts to call it 'wholly unjustified'. At least a really impressive part of the senators in your party didn't agree with you. As well as several countries in the world.
February 10, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess you and El Rushbo both have just gone way overbaord with the Oxycontin huh?
I keep wondering what your motivation is or possibly could be. It isnt' realistic to believe that anyone, even a total moron, is stupid enough to believe what you've just written. So what is it really? Mental health issues obviously, but what specifically? I'm not quite sure. Diagnosis of these things is sometimes rather difficult because symptoms of any given pathology are so often similar to those of others. I hope whatever it is, that you are under the care of a physician in a secure facility because that's clearly the place you belong.
February 10, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, now we know, oleeb. spriche was not only asleep and unaware, but thoroughly psychotic as well.
This reply to you was breathtaking in its revisionism. Worse, it seems sincere.
February 10, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Kinda makes ya wonder doesn't it?
February 10, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know a single real-world republican at the grassroots who resembles this blog.
Wow. Where do you hang out? Most, if not all of the Republicans that I know believe the government cannot solve this crisis, or that tax cuts are what will solve the crisis.
Here are a few of your grass-roots Free Republic Republicans in response to an article called Sen. Arlen Specter Explains Why He Will Vote for Stimulus Package.
Obama won with the support of Democrats and Independents. The latest CBS poll on Obama's job ratings show approval breakdown as R-36%, D-86%, I-56%.
The transformation of this country will be a lot more complex and nuanced than war versus welfare.
How condescending of you, Jason. Let me assure you that when I am speaking of more than war dollars and welfare dollars I'll make sure to include all the nuances, just for you.
February 10, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Above comment is in the wrong place. This is a reply to Jason.
February 10, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is condescending is your continued assertion that 36% of the republican party being behind Obama is irrelevant or a meaningless datapoint. Of the 64% who remain, most of them would prefer Obama succeeds. Don't point to the exception as somehow disproving the rule.
Limbots are a much less than 50% of the republican party and growing smaller by the day. The Freepers don't represent a majority of voters anymore than TPM represents a majority of voters. All democrats can do right now is slow that process down.
The crazies on the far right of the republican party do not speak for the "grassroots" anymore than Kucinich supporters spoke for the democratic or moderate grassroots. Again, America is more complex than such artificial distinctions allow for.
I am sorry if you were offended or felt I was talking down to you, but if you explain things in overly simplistic terms, expect a little confusion on behalf of the reader.
February 10, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Jason, this was my first usage of the 36% number. You have me confused with someone on the 'Rushbo thread.
However, if you want the rest of the Republican breakdown, 36% disapprove of the job BO is doing and 28% are unsure. I wouldn't count on the 36% who disapprove to all be rooting for Obama's policies to succeed. But it would be interesting to have some back-up for your 64% opinion, other than that it's just your opinion and you are going to stick with it.
Now I'll leave the simplistic part alone. Peace.
February 10, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The people who approve of his job performance so far, by your numbers 46%, are already deciding to be part of the change. The Limbots who can't be reached are smaller than that number. Common sense dictates that the remaining 28% who are unsure remain open to new solutions.
That is an astounding 74% of the republican party who are already behind Obama or are at least willing to hear the plan's specifics.
The kicker is that those progressive solutions can't be positioned using the same old rhetoric. It might actual require some amount of dialogue over the next four years for most Americans to agree with the direction we are going. Nice change from half the country forcing the other half to do what they say is right.
I didn't confuse anything. You continue to insist that the far right crowd who go to Freerepublic or think Rush is a God are somehow representative of the silent conservative majority. That is not reasonable analysis in my world. Anymore than it is reasonable to assume that all democrats approved of the DLC-led version of the neoconservative economic model in the 1990s.
The numbers don't back that up. My own experiences, albeit circumstantial and anecdotal from my own life and from this site, point to an opportunity for all of us to finally evolve beyond this left-right paradigm. It is also my contention that if we don't, all of our efforts are doomed to fail because we can't last another four years locked in partisan warfare.
You're right. My point is rather simplistic and I have never claimed it to be anything other than my opinion.
Based on my opinion of what I see on the right, not just the far right, I think democrats should do everything they can to live up to their core value of the Golden Rule when it comes to interacting with conservative, no matter how intransigent or uninformed. That all liberals should assume every republican is just waiting to push their representatives to offer viable conservative alternatives to delivering our shared progressive vision as articulated by our articulate new president.
I have never claimed to have any special knowledge other than my analysis of the numbers and my own impressions gained through numerous interactions both on- and off-line.
February 10, 2009 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink